A 34-year-old man was arrested after allegedly stealing a car in Tampa and driving it to the Marion County Sheriff\u2019s Office headquarters in Ocala.<\/p>\n
An MCSO deputy was outside of the headquarters at around 5 p.m. on Friday, April 24, when he was approached by a man who was later identified as Erik James Drake, according to the arrest report.<\/p>\n
Drake allegedly told the deputy that he \u201chad just stolen the vehicle he arrived in.\u201d The deputy noted in the report that the vehicle in question was a \u201csilver in color passenger car,\u201d and a computer search of its license plate revealed that it had been reported stolen out of Tampa.<\/p>\n
After being advised of his Miranda rights, Drake reportedly told the deputy that he resides at the Good Samaritan Inn located on N Florida Avenue in Tampa. He allegedly advised that he was \u201cwalking in the area of Florida Avenue [while] looking for a vehicle to steal\u201d when he spotted the silver car.<\/p>\n
According to Drake, the car\u2019s engine was running with the key inside, and he \u201cdecided to take the vehicle and travel north\u201d in order to \u201cvisit his mother in Sumter County.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drake then reportedly drove to Marion County and \u201cended up at the MCSO [headquarters],\u201d where he allegedly admitted to the vehicle theft. <\/p>\n
The deputy notified Tampa police regarding this incident and then placed Drake under arrest. He was booked into Marion County Jail, where he remains in custody.<\/p>\n
Drake\u2019s bond has been set at $2,500, and he has been charged with grand theft of a motor vehicle.<\/p>\n
Jail records show that Drake is scheduled to appear in a Marion County courtroom at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26.<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 34-year-old man was arrested after allegedly stealing a car in Tampa and driving it to the Marion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[26733,64447,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-255332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-marion-county-sheriffs-office","tag-ocala-fl","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}